Doing Business with Public Works

About the Program

Category: Community and Economic Development (Best in Category)

Year: 2013

Los Angeles County Public Works (Public Works) is the largest such organization in the country and offers a multitude of contracting opportunities to local businesses, including landscaping, architectural designs, construction, consulting services, and capital projects. Public Works created the Business Opportunities portal to enhance communications, create a notification process when new opportunities are available, and to download detailed information. Through this “one-stop” destination, bidding materials, Public Works’ contact information, and other related County and State contracting information is available. The portal tracks the contract life cycle from upcoming, open, closed, to awarded contracts. Businesses are provided options to stay connected and informed of contracting opportunities, including e-mail notifications, social media (tweets), and/or Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds. To support the public facing portal are back-end systems built with business logic and workflows to streamline the review and approval process. Staff receives reminder e-mails, initiates workflow to obtain approvals, retrieves reports, and manages the contract life cycle.In 2012, Public Works posted more than 120 projects valued at over $432 million through this portal. More than 2,500 businesses used the system to register their business profile and/or to subscribe to notifications. Overall, the site received more than 230,000 unique visitors.